From the orbit, this landscape of Mars looks like a honeycomb or a cobweb. But the unusual polygon-shaped features are not created by Martian bees or spiders; they are actually formed from a process of seasonal change underway created from water ice and carbon dioxide.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera has seen many polygon shapes since 2006, when it entered Mars orbit.
(NASA / JPL / Arizona)
Above: Polygonal dunes on Mars, seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera.
HiRISE’s scientific team says that both water and carbon dioxide in solid dry ice form play an important role in sculpting the surface of Mars at high latitudes.
Water ice frozen in the ground divides the ground into polygon shapes. Then the dry ice that sublimates from below the surface when the soil warms up in the spring creates even more erosion, creating channels around the boundaries of the polygons.
(NASA / JPL-Caltech / UArizona)
Above: Mars fans and polygons on Mars, as seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera.
Polygons form over many years as ice near the surface contracts and expands seasonally.
But this polygon-covered region shows even more spring activity, evidenced by the fan-shaped blue features. Scientists say that the layer of translucent dry ice that covers the surface develops ventilation holes that allow the gas to escape.
“The gas carries fine particles of surface material further eroding the channels,” the team wrote on the HiRISE website.
“Particles fall to the surface in dark fan-shaped deposits. Sometimes dark particles sink into dry ice, leaving bright marks where the fans were originally deposited. Often the ventilation is closed and then opened. new, so we see two or more fans, originally from the same place but oriented in different directions as the wind changes. “
(NASA / JPL)
Above: Detailed image of large-scale crater land polygons, caused by the desiccation process, with smaller polygons caused by thermal contraction inside. The central polygon is 160 meters in diameter, the smallest ones are between 10 and 15 meters wide and the cracks are between 5 and 10 meters wide.
Scientists study a polygonal soil on Mars because these features help them understand the recent and past distribution of ice in the shallow subsoil, as well as provide clues about weather conditions.
And Mars is not the only place with polygons. Polygons can be found in the Arctic and Antarctic regions of Earth, and the 2015 overflight of the New Horizons spacecraft also revealed polygons to Pluto.
(NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI)
Above: polygons seen on Pluto.
In the center left of Pluto’s large heart-shaped feature, informally called “Tombaugh Regio,” is a vast craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped by geological processes. .
This icy region lies north of Pluto’s icy mountains and is informally called Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), in honor of Earth’s first artificial satellite. The surface appears to be divided into polygon-shaped segments that are surrounded by narrow troughs.
Also visible are features that appear to be groups of mounds and fields of small pits. This image was acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers).
Features as small as half a mile (1 kilometer) are visible. The block aspect of some features is due to image compression.
This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.